# 74 on my, 99 Life Tips–A List is: Think less about how you feel and more about what you should do.
The people I know who spend the most time analyzing how they feel consistently feel the worst. I may confuse correlation with causation, a common problem, but the predictability of this outcome led to the tip above.
For consistently better feelings, how you feel matters less than what you do. If you will refocus your attention, you’ll feel better,… and be more productive, to boot.
I’m on a sometimes weight loss (sometimes weight gain) regimen known by its common name as a “diet”. To track progress, I stand on a scale hoping it doesn’t chuckle and say, “One at a time, please.” I can see the number. It is measurable, serving as an indicator of whether I can afford to drink a beer.
There is no empirical scale for emotional states
Seriously though, emotional states don’t work that way. There is no objective, empirical scale.
Asking someone whose emotional states fluctuate dangerously how they feel on a subjective 5-point scale is the equivalent of asking an obviously drunk person if they’re drunk, and what they think they’d blow. Chances are high you will not get an accurate answer.
Maybe I’m different, but whenever asked to pick from three emoticon faces ranging from sad—to neutral—to happy, nine times out of ten, I’m neutral. I seldom think about how I feel.
When I feel good, I just enjoy it. It doesn’t occur to me to stop and evaluate whether I’m at a 3.5 or 4. If I feel bad; I figure out why, what I’m thinking, what it would look like fixed, and what I can do about it. I don’t ponder whether I’m feeling a dismal 1 or perhaps as high as a 2. Degree is irrelevant.
If you get stuck here, analyzing and cataloguing your feelings, you may wish to reconsider. How effective is it? What does your subjective answer about your subjective feelings tell you except in the most general terms?
It is important to know how things make you feel so that you can do something to either recreate them or eliminate them. The action you take is the key thing.
I’ve written about the relationship between emotions and thoughts, so this is where I start when I feel bad. My thinking is the usual culprit. I don’t start by figuring out how bad I feel. I don’t press on my emotions like I do bruises. If I feel bad at all, that’s bad enough to take action.
You most definitely figure out what you’re feeling so you can act accordingly. What you feel and how much you feel are different. Yes, figure out what you’re feeling; think less about how you’re feeling, and figure out what you should do.
Because ultimately, how you feel matters less than what you do.
The second quote is an enlargement upon a clause of Proverbs 23:7, which says:
”As he thinks in his heart, so is he…”
~ Proverbs 23:7
We Live The Lives We’re Willing To Live
My essay, Your Will Cannot Control Your Emotions…, focuses on what the will cannot do. The focus of this piece is what you can choose to do. You can change your life. You can change how you feel. But to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking.
Greg, are you saying that my life and my emotional condition are the products of my thoughts?
Yes, dear Reader. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I wouldn’t expect you to take me at my word. After all, who am I to you?
But please don’t let the fact that I am unknown to you keep you from hearing these truths. Perhaps you stumbled this post at a time when you have ears to hear exactly what it is you need to hear.
Each of us lives the life we’re willing to live. Period. You woke up today in a life your current thinking has created for you. Our inner narrator acclimates to, and perpetuates our script. We dutifully play out our scenes. Believing ourselves to be free, we fail to recognize that too large a percentage of our lives is spent responding and reacting to stimuli over which we exercise little to no control. We feel ourselves going through the motions of a life somehow not our own.
To Be Free Is To Think
And even if we feel bad about it, we too quickly grow accustomed to it. Perhaps we don’t like the direction our life has taken. But if we never stop to think, not just reflexively respond, our lives will not change. The most free thing a person can do is think for themselves. All freedom blooms from that first, most basic, unchainable freedom.
But if you allow your mind and attention to be either captured, or misdirected, you’re giving that freedom away, or using it in a way that will do you no good. Unless you learn to be awake, aware, and not on auto-pilot, your life won’t change. How could it? Who will change it? Who will change your emotions or your circumstances, if not you?
These are psychological, physiological, philosophical, and spiritual truths. There are volumes of writings that prove my assertions, inasmuch as these ideas can be proven.
Again, I say, if you want to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking. The surest, and only way, to get a different output, is to change the inputs.
Your Thinking Creates Your Life and Your Feelings About It
You will never feel good while thinking about what’s bad. You will never find solutions while focusing on the problems. You feel bad because you spend more time looking at what is wrong in your life and world than what is good and right in it. You find no solutions because you don’t allow yourself to imagine what your life would look like fixed, absent the problems that plague it. Without a vision of a better state of affairs, how do you know which direction to go? How do you know which means to use, which levers to pull, which variables to change, to get to that imagined result?
Change in your feelings and circumstances may not happen overnight. It may take a lot of work. There may be false starts and resets, but if you keep thinking of the life you want, and the steps you can take to get there, you will one day wake up in a different life those different thoughts created. And you’ll feel fundamentally different for the entire journey.
I suspect you’re feeling a tiny flame of inspirational hope that things can be different. That you can feel better about your life. Yes, you can. Fan that tiny flame. It will be hard, but worthwhile work, to change your patterns, change your thinking, and transform your life into the one you actually want to be living. You can do it. You’re the only one who can. You hold the keys.
Thoughts yield Emotions, Emotions come from Thoughts. However you think of it, you cannot will emotions into, or out of, existence (Image by author)
# 48 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Emotions cannot be directly controlled by the will. Try to be scared now. You have to first think of something scary, right? All emotions are this way. They are the fruit of your thoughts.
You Will Never Un-See This Truth
There are some truths that, once presented to the mind, become irrefutable. The truth that emotion cannot be directly controlled by the will belongs to this class. Try it. As demonstrated in the example above, feelings don’t respond to your will. Your mind and thoughts must play an intermediate role. This role is indispensable. Your will cannot control your emotions. It cannot produce fear on its own initiative.
If you try now to be joyful, say, as an act of will, you will encounter the same obstacle. You must think of something joyous first. Once you do, the emotion is easy to produce. In fact, it is impossible to feel any other way for as long as you keep the joyous thought in your mind.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.
~Michel de Montaigne
If you cannot make yourself feel a certain way by willing the feeling into existence, neither can you will the feeling out of existence, once you’re feeling it.
While I am a staunch advocate of controlling everything you can. The linked discoveries that my will cannot control my emotions, rather, that my emotions come from my thinking (which I can control), has proved of incalculable worth to me. I hope you will find the same benefit.
Exactly How Does This Help You?
Knowing the general rule of where your emotions come from, allows you to know how to change them. And it will keep you from wasting time and energy listening to bad advice like, ”Don’t be (angry, afraid, anxious,)”
Your will doesn’t control your feelings. So you can safely stop trying.
Sometimes, knowing what not to do is an important step in discovering what to do.
Now, you realize the following:
Your will does not produce your emotions, instead;
Emotions are the products of your thoughts, and;
Thoughts can be controlled by a conscious, willful choice (in the absence of mental illness of neurological pathology), therefore;
Saying this woman feels “bad” doesn’t reveal much about what she’s really feeling. We would have to go granular to find out. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed by author)
# 45 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: In the face of negative emotions, go as granular as you can to analyze and identify exactly what it is you’re feeling. Generalities like, ”I’m just sad,” won’t work.
No matter your optimism, positive-mindedness, or mental toughness, there will be times when you feel bad. Unfortunately, this fact besieges and ensnares us all. Even those whose practice is to deny negative emotions, for a moment feel bad enough to trigger their denial response. It is neither a crime, nor a sin, to feel bad. In the physical world, pain is a signal that something is damaged or injured and needs protective care. Ignoring physical pain can lead to permanent damage.
This is also true of emotional pain. Ignoring or denying mental and emotional pain is not an effective strategy if mental and emotional health is the goal. Neither are generalizations a good remedy. Telling yourself, or others, ”I’m just down today,” or, ”I just feel bad,” doesn’t give any clues either to what it is you’re really feeling, or to the cause. Think of the last time someone mouthed this to you. Did their, ”I just feel bad,” provide enough useful information to offer a solution or ease their suffering?
Sometimes, we guard our privacy by deflecting unwanted attention away from our down times. Uttering a generic, ”I’m just a little down,” can be a defensive, avoidance technique. However, it’s not healthy to do this to yourself. One practice that is helpful is to probe deeper than these surface generalities to unmask exactly, precisely what you’re feeling.
Emotional Nuance Is More Than Semantics
There is a difference between ”sadness,” and depression, and between depression, and anxiety. Likewise, are you ”upset,” or frustrated? ”Angry,” or just annoyed? Do you feel ”hurt,” or ashamed? Are you simply ”bothered,” or do you feel overlooked and invisible? These nuances of emotional intensity and precision are more than mere semantics.
Going ”granular” yields analysis of your feelings with specificity. And the process of ferreting out precisely what you’re feeling, will often reveal why you’re feeling it. Oftentimes, this discovery is the insight you need to change the way you feel. Sometimes this happens instantly. Other times, you’ll come away with a hard-won lesson that can bring beauty and wisdom from the pain. At minimum, you will have a diagnostic tool revealing the root causes of the matter.
The next time you feel bad, go as granular as you can. Dive deeply to discover exactly what you’re feeling. You’ll likely also uncover the ”why” of your negative emotions, and this awareness will equip you to address the roots, and not just the bad, surface fruits, represented by those generic ”bad” feelings.
Emotional Intelligence starts with the recognition that All Emotions Are Valid
# 44 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Allow everyone in your life to feel how they feel, they’re going to anyway. If you tell them they shouldn’t feel a certain way, you’re alienating yourself by your own emotional ignorance.
To start, I want to acknowledge and thank John Gottman, author of multiple books, relationship and marriage therapist par excellence, and founder of the John Gottman Institute, where many fine people continue his work on relationships and emotional maturity. Many of the things I will touch on in this article I learned from reading his books and watching his videos and Ted Talks (like this one with over a million views).
I’ll also be linking to several articles for further reading. I promise I’m not intentionally plagiarizing any specific comment, phrase, or idea, but after 16 years of assimilation, I’ve adopted a lot of the language as my own.
Wow. Where do I start with this one? It is regrettable that I discovered the truth that all feelings are valid, far too late in my life. 40 years old, married, and the father of 7 kids, I was an emotional idiot, alternately over or under reacting to the negative emotions of the people around me. I even became a full-time minister. Nevertheless, I possessed zero, ZERO emotional intelligence. Why? Mostly because of how I was raised, and consequently conditioned, to deal with negative emotions.
Before proceeding, it must be noted that emotions, typically thought of as feelings, are not just feelings. They are behaviors, too. The feeling of anger can give rise to an outburst (behavior). Negative emotions form patterned responses (including associated behaviors) from a young age.
Four Parenting Styles
Gottman identifies four distinct parenting styles that influence the development of these patterned reactions. These styles imprint children for dealing with negative emotions as they grow into adulthood. I’ve linked an article outlining each of the styles. Only one of them can develop emotionally stable kids who grow up to be emotionally intelligent and emotionally mature adults. That style is the ”Emotion Coach”.
Emotion Coach parents recognize the validity of a child’s negative feelings, and help their child work out appropriate responses. This is the crux of the matter if you ever hope to become emotionally intelligent, benefitting both yourself and the people with whom you are in relationship. All emotions are valid, even if all responses are not.
I wasn’t raised by an Emotion Coach. I was raised to deny negative emotions, to ignore them, and to distract myself from them. My mom was a bi-polar, suicidal alcoholic who took her own emotional medicine. When she felt bad, which was often, she wrote bad checks, or passed out drunk, or slept with inappropriately aged young men, or sometimes…took handfuls of pills.
Whenever I felt bad it was, ”Here honey, you don’t need to feel that way, have a drink.” And when I got angry, she’d get just as angry, or worse, apparently believing the way to exorcise anger was to blow it out of your system. We could be angry together. It was us against the stupid world.
Being A Christian Doesn’t Impart Emotional Intelligence
So, of course, my life followed the stereotypical pattern. I didn’t like to feel bad. I had learned that I shouldn’t have to feel along with many ways to make myself feel better. Sex, and cocaine, and weed were great ways to avoid, ignore, or distance myself from negative emotions.
This wasn’t going to end well, but it was definitely going to end.
At 21, I became a serious Christian. I mean really serious. But reading and memorizing large swaths of the Bible didn’t make me emotionally intelligent. In some ways, my poor understanding of Jesus and Christianity made me less so. If a Christian feels bad, it’s their fault, right? God doesn’t feel bad. Jesus doesn’t. If you feel bad, you must be doing something wrong that more prayer, or listening to more teaching tapes on Faith, or attending more meetings on Sundays and Wednesday nights can fix.
In short, I grew up believing that feeling bad is not okay. Feeling bad when you’re a Christian is REALLY not ok. I mean, what’s the point?
Maybe you grew up in a lion’s den, too. Maybe you were taught to deny your negative feelings because it is not acceptable to feel bad. I want to say however you feel right now is valid. It is how you feel. You don’t have to rationalize those feelings or justify them to anyone. They are yours, and you are entitled to them. I’m sure if we could all see inside your life and your head, we’d understand a lot better why you feel as you do. And if we couldn’t, that’s our problem, not yours.
Having said that, all of your responses to your feelings are not appropriate. I’ll explain shortly.
Even as an ardent Christian, I went years in a state of emotional detachment to people. Growing up with a mom who routinely attempted suicide, and even more regularly threatened it, doesn’t exactly make one trust and value long-term relationships. I had seen her be gut-wrenchingly depressive so often, with nothing ever coming of it, that I completely detached if anyone around me ever cried or got upset. My mom’s drunken, cryee-faced, suicide routine had taught me that kind of drama wasn’t real, and not something to get too alarmed about.
Inappropriate Responses
For years, I was happy, rarely depressed, not a substance abuser, had a wife and kids, friends, and at 26, became a full-time minister.
Then, 12 years ago, after 22 and a half years of marriage, I found out my wife was cheating on me with an old high school ”friend” she had reconnected with on Facebook. I was so emotionally oblivious that it went on for 6 months before I discovered her treachery. But then, according to pattern, I was devastated and angry. Murderously angry.
Those feelings, given my situation, were completely valid. (I even had a licensed Christian marriage counselor tell me so). Feeling betrayed, I wanted to kill. That’s understandable. But actually killing either of them would have been horribly inappropriate. It wouldn’t have erased the adultery, it would have just put me in jail for murder.
That’s an extreme example, but it is my story, and I’m sticking with it.
I’m also ashamed to admit, that sometimes after my girls became teenagers, struggling with typical teenage girl problems, they would cry themselves to sleep at night, and I was emotionally unavailable. Sometimes I would make it worse by telling them to pray. I didn’t want them to feel bad. I offered many reasons why they shouldn’t…usually heavily laced with what I thought were uplifting scriptures. But my attempts were born out of a stupidity about the nature of emotions and emotional connection.
It seemed the more they cried and hurt, the more shut down and aloof I became.
This all changed one night when I picked up my 15 year old second daughter from a party with friends. I knew she had a crush on a boy at the party and on the way home I asked her about him. She became upset and teary as she explained that he had hardly paid any attention to her. Crying, she told me he had been obsessed with another girl. Then she told me how bad this made her feel about herself, and how she would never have a boyfriend.
It was the perfect opportunity for me to be a good, loving, understanding father to a teen-age daughter who just needed me to be there for her. It was a chance to hear her, validate her feelings, and relate to her that I had been rejected and ignored at her age too, and I understood how bad that could feel. I wish I had been that father.
Instead, I told her how silly it was to be upset. I explained that at her age nothing was going to come of this crush. And I told her that the boy was probably not ”godly” anyway and that she was much better off not getting any more involved with him. I told her to be thankful and to feel good that that was over. I can vaguely remember her looking at me incredulously with a tear-streaked face in the dark car. And I thought I had done so well trying to make her feel better.
The Turning Point
When we got home, I went about my normal routine and thought nothing more about it. After a while, I overheard her talking with her mom. She was crying and clearly upset. I got up and came into the kitchen where they were. My daughter was sitting on a barstool, her face in her hands. More teen-aged female drama, I thought. Hadn’t I already dealt with this and helped her get over it on the way home?
I said, ”You didn’t feel this way on the way home, and we get home and you fall to pieces?”
”I cried all the way home, Dad,” she said.
”What? Now, you’re just lying.” I said in return.
She jerked her head up, tears streaming, and I had the flashback of her face in the dark car. My emotional blindness astonished and floored me. After apologizing profusely to her, I retreated into my mind to try to understand how I had tuned out her emotions and her crying on the way home.
Though I had failed at getting her to ignore her bad feelings, I had succeeded in ignoring them myself. My patterned response to her crying had been to erase it from reality. So much that, to me, it didn’t even exist. I had marched into that kitchen in righteous indignation, clouded by emotional self-delusion, as if she was making up the whole dramatic scene just to curry compassion from her mother. I was stunned…in the best possible way.
Emotional Connection
The next day, I searched for the words ”Emotional Connection” and discovered John Gottman.
Do yourself a favor and watch a video, or read a book. Don’t be like me. Er, don’t be like I was!
I’m not that same detached, emotionally unavailable man anymore. It has taken work. Some of the time it has felt very artificial because my ingrained tendencies to deny, deflect, and distract were so deep. I’m no longer afraid to feel bad, quite the contrary. And I have the distinct pleasure and honor of hearing my girlfriend tell that I’m the most emotionally intelligent person she’s ever known.
I have the unspeakable satisfaction to be there for my kids when things are bad, knowing that now, I’m in it with them. I’m able to relate to their emotions, and validate them, and they know it. I’m much more the Emotion Coach now, even to my adult children. I teach and model for them that all emotions are valid, even if all responses are not. I’ve stopped telling them how to feel, or how they shouldn’t feel. I let them feel how they feel. They were always going to anyway.
And I have the chance to share these things with you, dear Reader. I hope you’ll find how affirming and strengthening it is when you allow the people in your life to feel how they feel without judging them, or trying to change their feelings, or ”make them feel better.”
One of life’s greatest gifts is a kind soul who will help us shoulder the burdens of times when we feel down. A friend and partner with whom we can share our hurts without fear of judgement. One who will hear us, hold us, be there through it with us, allowing us the space to feel all we need to feel, and who will help us respond appropriately. You can be that gift.
PS–
There are times you’ll be in a position to validate and affirm someone’s emotions, when you believe the reasons for their emotional state may not be sound. That can happen. When it does, I encourage you to connect emotionally. Tell the person you understand how they feel. You may even say something like, ”It’s understandable you feel that way since that’s how you see ____________.” The time to discuss the reasons for the feelings will come after you affirm the existence of the feelings.
Do you wake up in the morning and decide to feel bad? Ever?
And, to be specific, I’m talking about emotions here, not physical ailments. Though, no one wakes up wanting to feel sick, either. It’s certainly true that our emotional selves live at the mercy of our physical selves. There’s no denying the physical constitution dictates a measure of mental and emotional well-being.
But emotionally speaking, in general terms, and in the absence of pathology, bad feelings show up because you’ve invited them. You don’t have to explicitly ask them in for coffee, they just barge in as the plus-one of your thoughts.
No, most of us don’t choose to feel bad. At least not in a way we’re consciously aware of.
But, without a doubt, there are things you can do to guarantee you’ll feel bad, right? Try to go through your day noticing every single thing that is wrong with the world. Think about everything in your life that isn’t how you want it to be. If that doesn’t do the trick, think of the things that are okay and see what you can do today to spoil them rather than nurture them.
What about feeling good? Can you decide to feel good? I think you can. You probably can’t guarantee good feelings the same way you can guarantee bad ones, but you can certainly choose what to focus on. You can direct your attention.
Here’s a way to give yourself a chance to feel good about things today.
First, think of how you can guarantee feeling bad.
My favorite athlete to watch in an individual sport is Rafael Nadal. He is currently second behind only Roger Federer in number of Grand Slam tennis titles won. If you don’t know who he is, you can look him up.
I like him because he is the rare combination of innate talent with an unmatched, ferocious work ethic. He is also humble in victory.
He is known for his relentless, never give up, never-quit-on-a-point effort. That, and his weird OCD including a ritual of pre-serve tics, and precision water and juice bottle placement. It’s fascinating to watch him place his juice down and give it an eighth of a twist to get the label pointing in just the right direction. As if that will matter.
Rafa never argues calls that go against him. He never complains about points he loses. He just moves on to the next point. When asked about the apparent discrepancy of being meticulous about juice bottles and yet not arguing even questionable calls, he said, ”I don’t waste emotional energy on things I cannot control.”
That.
In a life with finite energy available. It’s better to spend it twisting a bottle you can control, than to argue with a referee you cannot. It’s very important to recognize the difference.
You and I will never be Nadal. It’s rarified air to reach the summit of your field or profession, so that’s likely out of reach, too. But we can learn from him where not to waste our emotional energy.
